Heart's Desire eBook

CHAPTER XV

SCIENCE AT HEART’S DESIRE

This being the Story of a Cow Puncher, an Osteopath,
and a Cross-eyed Horse

“That old railroad’ll shore bust me up
a heap if it ever does git in here,” remarked
Tom Osby one morning in the forum of Whiteman’s
corral, where the accustomed group was sitting in
the sun, waiting for some one to volunteer as Homer
for the day.

There was little to do but listen to story telling,
for Tom Osby dwelt in the tents of Kedar, delaying
departure on his accustomed trip to Vegas.

“A feller down there to Sky Top,” he went
on, arousing only the most indolent interest, “one
of them spy-glass ingineers—­tenderfoot,
with his six-shooter belt buckled so tight he couldn’t
get his feet to the ground—­he says to me
I might as well trade my old grays for a nice new
checkerboard, or a deck of author cards, for I won’t
have nothing to do but just amuse myself when the
railroad cars gets here.”

No one spoke. All present were trying to imagine
how Heart’s Desire would seem with a railroad
train each day.

“Things’ll be some different in them days,
mebbe so.” Tom recrossed his legs with
well-considered deliberation.

“There’s a heap of things different already
from what they used to be when I first hit the cow
range,” said Curly. “The whole country’s
changed, and it ain’t changed for the better,
either. Grass is longer, and horns is shorter,
and men is triflin’er. Since the Yankees
has got west of the Missouri River a ranch foreman
ain’t allowed to run his own brandin’
iron any more, and that takes more’n half the
poetry out of the cow business, don’t it, Mac?”
This to McKinney, who was nearly asleep.

“Everything else is changing too,” Curly
continued, gathering fluency as memories began to
crowd upon him. “Look at the lawyers and
doctors there is in the Territory now—­and
this country used to be respectable. Why, when
I first come here there wasn’t a doctor within
a thousand miles, and no need for one. If one
of the boys got shot up much, we always found some
way to laundry him and sew him together again without
no need of a diplomy. No one ever got sick; and,
of course, no one ever did die of his own accord,
the way they do back in the States.”

“What’s it all about, Curly?” drawled
Dan Anderson. “You can’t tell a
story worth a cent.” Curly paid no attention
to him.

“The first doctor that ever come out here for
to alleviate us fellers,” he went on, “why,
he settled over on the Sweetwater. He was a allopath
from Bitter Creek. What medicine that feller
did give! He gradual drifted into the vet’inary
line.

“Then there come a homeopath—­that
was after a good many women folks had settled in along
the railroad over west. Still, there wasn’t
much sickness, and I don’t reckon the homeopath
ever did winter through. I was livin’
with the Bar T outfit on the Oscura range, at that
time.